


Pit Stop (or, one way Cameron keeps two steps behind Wilson in the race to out-run House)

by treelines (horchata)



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-18
Updated: 2007-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 16:35:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horchata/pseuds/treelines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing-scene fic from 3.01 "Meaning." Wilson and Cameron seem to talk a lot in the background, don't they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pit Stop (or, one way Cameron keeps two steps behind Wilson in the race to out-run House)

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2007 for the LJ community fraternizing, based on the prompt: "When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same," Toni Morrison. Beta'd by LJ user earlwyn.

Cameron uses the same knock each time she visits Wilson. He told her once -- told all the fellows that they were always welcome to stop by for some counsel (of any kind), to vent about House if they absolutely needed it (the definition of 'absolutely' being up to interpretation), or just to chat. So far, Cameron's the only one who's really taken advantage of the open invitation. Whether Wilson truly didn't mind has yet to be determined, but he hasn't refused her yet. And if she uses the same knock each time, he can't say he didn't know it was her.

Today has been a little on the hectic side. She's made this particular trek to the edges of the Witherspoon wing once already, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and seeing as how it was nearing the close of the afternoon of House's first official day back, she's pretty sure she's not Wilson's first repeat visitor.

Besides, her news is interesting.

"Come in," Wilson calls, and Cameron peaks her head in first before entering.

"Hi, am I interrupting anything?"

Wilson briefly glances upward in acknowledgment. "No, no, just paperwork. Hello," he says pleasantly. "Again." His attention is focused on the files in front of him – insurance forms, if the paper layout for Oncology is the same as Diagnostics. But she isn't here to compare interdepartmental logos.

"House... just asked me out for a drink."

"Huh. Did you accept?"

Cameron blinks. Hello, weirdness. Only Wilson's raised eyebrows seem interested. "You're not surprised?"

Wilson's face betrays his amusement. "You're still smiling."

A wave of embarrassment makes Cameron's arms cross as she tries to dampen her facial expressions and the faint heat behind her ears. "I'm -- flattered. But, no, I didn't accept." Wilson is still annoyingly nonplussed. Cameron frowns at his paperwork. She isn't used to being verbally shooed away by Wilson. To date, they have an established tradition of openly indulging each other's speeches. At least, that's how Cameron kind of looks at it. (She sometimes even practices her retorts out on Wilson before she uses them on House. It's proved useful in the past.)

At any rate, she's still sort of flabbergasted at him, well, _not _being flabbergasted. If she were being honest, this is pretty much the biggest romantic news in her life since sleeping with Chase, which is pathetically sad. "You were really expecting this?" she asks.

"Not _this, _exactly," Wilson gestures toward her. "But, he's better now. Physically, anyway. He's... exercising."

"Exercising?"

Wilson rewards her look with a patient smile. "You were the one to ask him last time, now it's his turn. It's just like the reason he's taken on his brain cancer patient. The case is open-and-shut; the emotions behind it are not. He's trying to re-learn why that's important."

"What, like the Grinch after a heart transplant?"

Wilson laughs. "You could say that."

Cameron sighs. "Someone should tell him he's going through acute organ rejection." She walks over to Wilson's couch, suddenly tired, and sits down. "I didn't accept. I'm not going to accept. For one thing, it follows my current track record for this date to be _just_ as awkward the second time around. But it was almost like he was rejecting it, too. He said I thought he was 'a sick puppy.'"

"Well, keep in mind, he's the one who obviously needs to be potty-trained."

"He said it was because he was better, and apparently now I don't want to fix him. 'Nurture' him." She rolls her eyes in an attempt to stifle a spark of exasperation. "I don't -- does he want me to discipline him until he can heel?"

Wilson sets his pen down, folding his hands on the file. _This is new_, his eyebrows say. Cameron is momentarily pleased with herself for being able to read the upper half of his forehead, until she realizes exactly what she said. "Oh, god, I didn't--!"

Wilson stops her with a gentle raise of his palm. "He wants you to play fetch."

"With what, a night on the town?"

"House is... so not a puppy, but this is beside the point. He's thrown away his stick. He wants you to bring it back."

She feels her own eyebrows knit. This is the language House and Wilson speak to her: riddles, metaphors. If she didn't know better, she'd think the two of them met at some cryptogram convention. The only difference is that Wilson is much more patient with his answers. It's rubbed off on her, now. She's bored by anyone who lays everything out on the table for her. It's destroyed her love life.

"His stick? He wants me to give him back his cane?"

"His crutch," Wilson says. He pauses a few moments before sighing. Cameron settles in for one of Wilson's Talks. "Have you ever heard the phrase 'all pain is the same'?"

Cameron feels a little spark of nostalgia, nodding. "Yeah, Toni Morrison, from _Beloved_. I wrote my last English paper ever on her book in college." She laughs a little, remembering her frustration with that sixteen-page monster. If only she had known what the future would hold for her in terms of medical papers back then, when all she had to decipher were literary devices. "I'm never going to escape that thing, am I?"

_Our sympathies, _say Wilson's eyebrows. "The whole thing goes on to say that when there's pain there aren't any words. You and I would hear that line and at least appreciate it for its artistic merit, its poignancy. House would hear it and roll his eyes at you; make the requisite sarcastic comment, probably throw something."

Cameron laughs politely at Wilson's 'comedian on stage' voice. She can imagine House's reaction in her tired dorm room commons, chucking the tired paperback at the wall. Of course, House was probably the jerk at all the parties who pulled 'A's out of his ass for fun.

"For House," Wilson continues, "that's what life has been the past seven years. All the pain is the same. Emotional, psychological, physical... he's been dealing with it all the same way."

"The pills," Cameron supplies.

"Right, the pills. What's more, according to Morrison, he's been going about it the wrong way."

Cameron understands it's another moment for audience participation. "He complains." The follow-up phrase 'all the time' is practically understood.

"If anyone has a few hundred words on pain to impart, it's House." Wilson takes a moment to organize his papers while he talks. "He practically communicates in pain, like some twisted kind of sign language.

"House operates -- _has _operated on the basis of being a cripple for so long that now he needs to figure out a replacement language, a replacement persona. Running eight miles to work, taking on cases he can already solve..."

"Asking me out for a drink," she finishes. Cameron's posture relaxes somewhat to think. "Exercising the emotion."

Wilson nods. One gold star for Cameron. "Muscles aren't the only things that can atrophy." He picks up his pen and offers her a final raise of his eyebrows. _Back to business_. "But," he says, sighing matter-of-fact, "it looks like you blew it."

Floored, Cameron snaps back to attention. "_I _blew it? _You're _the one talking about House having some kind of exercise session with me!"

"This isn't _physical _therapy, Allison. You don't get very many second tries with House once you've refused them. He's stubborn. Chews the furniture." A hint of a smirk dances on Wilson's forehead. Cameron brushes the brief mental image of his eyebrows dancing out of the way before she smirks back. She doesn't want to be amused. Her first name? Good old Papa Wilson patting her gently on the head? She's tried to stop all that recently. Cameron doesn't want anything special from Wilson, from anyone. She's glad he treats her like a valued colleague, but she resents being some confused child. House's emotional therapist? She'll just have to work harder.

Wilson isn't finished. "Your refusal really was sincere?"

"It was." She steels her jaw. "I honestly don't want to go out with him."

"Then you have nothing to worry about. He might even stop bothering you about it entirely. Or, well. Cut back some, at least." Wilson's look is apologetic. "Sometimes he goes back to the easier puzzles. Just to know he can beat the game."

Cameron's mouth opens and closes. Her back straightens as well; she isn't stupid, she caught the dig. "And that's it?"

"That's it," he repeats, shrugging. "For now at least."

Cameron feels... she doesn't know how she feels. She concentrates on harvesting her annoyance at being a 'simple' puzzle, at being 'Allison'. Wilson's leaned forward again, forearms resting on his desk. "You're probably home free."

She nods. His eyebrows raise briefly and then settle; Cameron is left with a minorly unsettling feeling that Wilson has just completed a puzzle of his own. She needs to get out of here.

"I should get back to our yoga patient. Prep her for surgery."

"Good luck," Wilson offers. "Oh, and Cameron?"

She turns back.

"Is House really planning to go recklessly hunting for cancer along her spine?"

Cameron smirks despite herself. "Last I heard."

Wilson sighs, and pulls out his wallet to retrieve two hundred-dollar bills. "Nurse Brenda is collecting on the pool. Pay Foreman my congratulations."

She takes his money with thin, pressed lips and makes plans to go home early.


End file.
